42 hurry. Across from Carlotta sat a re- tired American naval officer who had lost an arm and had to have his meat cut. Americans seldom washed up along this fragment of coast. His neighbors referred to him as "the Ad- miral," and had never bothered to de- cide if he was Bessel, Biesel, or Beisel, while the antique dealers called him I vor instead of Ira. Next to him, at- tentive to his requirements, was the former wife of a French minister of state. More as chatter than conversa- tion, she announced to the table that her ex-husband was threatening to bring legal action against her for con- tinuing to use his name. Carlotta, whose French was better than fair, said she should never have given up her own name. Taking an- other name was like signing a brief for slavery. Carlotta had been in France nine days now-long enough to know the whole male-female business was due for an overhauling. Ira Biesel looked at me and said, "Lily's daughter?," as if he could hardly believe it. "Lily is my mother," said Carlotta, "but Steve isn't my father. At least, I don't think so." She seemed so star- yond the symbolic hurdle of my "Chapter 1," she had completed the freestanding structures Quaternion I, II, and III, and was pasting sequins one by one on the naked framework of IV. Irma belonged to the subversive, incompetent forces whose mission it is to make art useless. Her work, which I believe she unloaded on loyal friends, could not be got inside any normal dwelling except by dint of pulling down a wall and part of the roof. Cultural authorities the world over were prepared to encourage her by means of grants; indulgent relations were disposed to gamble on her future. I suppose it was a sign that I had lived a long time and seen a great deal that everything meant to reflect the era seemed out of date. Try to tell them it's already been done, I thought. (I had told her; her eyes filled with tears.) I had reached the step of the staircase from which one cannot esti- mate age; I could only look down and think, Young. I'd have put Irma at thirty-odd. When her present grant, or her uncle's patience, ran out, and she had to go back to the hardboiled and standpat world of filling out new application forms ("Age! Shows? Group? Single? Spon- sors?"), something would need to be done with her summer's work. There was no possible way the struc- tures could be carried up to the road without smashing some of my windows. No van, no hired truck, no container could hold the complete Quaternion. Per- haps it could be conveyed the other way, beyond the cactus hedge, and burned on the beach. "I like her hair," said Carlotta, waving back. "That's its natural color. I asked her. It's a natural streak effect. " Carlotta dropped her voice. "You know? She had this racing- car driver who loved her? He went into a canal in Belgium and drowned. He could drive, but he couldn t swim." "I've heard the story." "So now she just has her art. " "Loved her" was surely fictitious, like her bogus façade of art. I thoug h t tIed, hurt almost, when we laughed that I wondered what nonsense was taking its slow course through the child's head. To Victor de Stentor, sitting beside her, she said, "I'm a committed vegetarian," and, holding a slice of roast beef between knife and fork, deftly removed it to his plate. I wanted to ask why she had helped herself to something she had no inten- tion of eating, but remembered with some thankfulness that she was not mine, and that she was probably too old to be checked in public. Later, as we left the party and climbed a number of steps to my house, she said, "I enjoyed that. I really did. You can learn a lot from older people. In Monaco, we just watched TV." W E brought books to breakfast, as if we had been living together for a long time. "Why do you call this a terrace?" Carlotta said. "What would you call it?" "More like a deck, but not exactly. I like to get things right." Irma Baes, already at grips with creation, waved from her garden. In only five weeks, progressing well be- l !' 1: "M oney used to mean something. Now it's all just money for money's sake." MAY 18,1987